Total situational awareness since 2004.

April 30, 2010

Another Great Essay On Writing...

... That Anne Lamott piece I linked to the other day got me thinking about other pieces of writing about writing (or creating in general) that I find freeing and inspiring.

One that I treasure deeply is Jonathan Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence which, amongst other things, is an assault on the idea of sui generis art that not only argues for redefining what originality is so that it's a creatively useful concept, but is an object lesson in how that new definition might work.

I've linked to it many times over the years, mainly to discuss its relationship to intellectual property, which is the essay's subject. But lurking within Lethem's entry into the Copyleft movement is an honest and generous discussion of how creativity actually works.

And did I mention the entire thing is available for free on the internet? I didn't. Oh. Sorry about that. Here it is.

We have a lot of wonderful, creative people reading this blog. What writing about creating do you draw inspiration from?

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Probably an odd example to cite, but the title essays from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up do it for me. Written after the relatively indifferent reception of Gatsby and Tender, the three pieces are unflinchingly honest about the emotional and psychological debit that creation inflicts on the artist: "the state of emotional exhaustion that often overtakes writers in their prime." I realize that this sounds more depressing than inspiring, but the way Fitzgerald talks himself back from his breakdown is paradoxically comforting. I keep them handy for when I'm having trouble writing or feel discouraged by the work. Amazingly, they are online; Esquire, who originally published them in 1936, made them available a few years ago.

Speaking of copyleft.... Joni Mitchell's interview with the LA Times was prompted by John Kelly's faithful recreation of her persona and songs, with her cooperation. And, in context, this is what she said about Dylan:

"LAT: As well, you've had experience becoming a character outside yourself [Mitchell caused controversy when she appeared as an African American male on the cover of her 1977 album, "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter"].The folk scene you came out of had fun creating personas. You were born Roberta Joan Anderson, and someone named Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan.

JM: Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.

As for my name, my parents wanted a boy, so they called me Robert John; when I came out a girl, they just added two letter A's to that. Then I married Chuck Mitchell; I wanted to keep my maiden name — I had a bit of a following as Joni Anderson — but he wouldn't let me."

How does this tie in to Lethem's essay? He dedicates a paragraph of Dylan's appropriative tendencies.